There are some simple things you can do to improve the speed of your computer system. When you keep your computer maintained you can ensure that it continues to run at its peak performance. You can improve the speed of any Windows computer whether it is XP, Vista or Windows 7. You should not just be concerned about maintaining your computers speed you want to ensure you protect your privacy as well.

Removing spyware, viruses and adware will not only ensure that you are protecting your privacy and information it will also help to dramatically improve the performance of your PC as well. Spyware if present on your computer will run continuously in the background resulting in dragging down the speed of your computer while collecting personal information about you without your knowledge or permission.

Microsoft offers some tools you can download for free that will scan and remove software from your computer. Live OneCare will help you check your computer for viruses and remove them.

You can also download the Security Essentials from Microsoft that will help to protect your computer from being infected with adware, spyware and viruses. This tool will help to remove these threats and is updated automatically ensuring that you are protected for any emerging threats.

The final tool from Microsoft is the Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool that will detect and remove Mydoom, Sasser and Blaster.

Being sure that you eliminate and prevent infections from malware will ensure that your system will perform at top speed.

The speed it takes for your computer to boot up can be affected by the size of your user account. To view the sizes of the user accounts you will find them in the Settings button of the User Profiles in the Control Panel. There is a listing of all the users along with the size of the accounts.

You have a lot of control over the size of your user account. If you do not store all your pictures and documents in account folders of your user it will make the size much smaller. Default user folders are automatically created when a user profile is created. These folders include: bookmark favorites, pictures, music, games and document. If you end up with a corrupt user account you may lose all information in these folders. Viruses are also knows to attach systems through the user profiles. This makes the information in these folders and accounts very vulnerable.

It is recommended that you create folders outside the user account in an organized manner and be sure to back them up daily.

You might be surprised to know that all those icons on your desktop can make your computer start up more slowly and run slower as well. All desktop files are stored in the user profile as well making your user account larger that necessary.

While not new the Disk Cleanup utility is probably under utilized by most computer users. It is, however, one of the easiest and quickest ways to remove unnecessary items from your computer.

Advance System Properties is how your Windows computer appears. There are features that can add a cool or fancy appearance to your computer that may seem neat but can affect the performance of your computer. You have the option to using these features and properties or not. You can disable all or selected features. Many features when you disable them may not even be noticeable in your how your computer looks overall. If you choose to select the “best performance” option you will notice a more flat looking appearance to your system.

You can find this properties setting when you right click on the My Computer icon and then click on properties. If you have a computer running the XP operating system navigate to the Advance tab while Vista users will need to choose the option “Advance System Properties” on the left side of the window.

While choosing the Best Performance option might seem intuitively the best one as you will have the best result in speed it does not provide the best look to your computer. You may just want to disable the sliding, drop shadow and fade features and achieve the performance you want while retaining a better overall appearance to your PC.

Sometimes it is a tradeoff when trying to optimize the performance of your computer. Only you can determine what is the right balance for you. But when you play around a bit you can have the look you want and still have a faster running computer.

CCleaner is a great utility that will evaluate and clean your system registry. Over time many Windows computers begin to slow down. In most cases the root cause of this degradation in performance is attributable to the system registry. As you install and un-install software and experience software crashes and power interruptions many times it will cause corrupt or invalid entries to be made to the registry. This will cause problems for you if they are not resolved.

The registry is very important as it contains all the information that is needed for your computer programs and hardware devices to run. There are many settings that relate specifically to the version of the operating system that is running. It also contains system preferences, policies and file associations. Many critical pieces of information are stored in the system registry.

Unfortunately Microsoft does not provide a utility or tool that can be used to determine if there are any problems in the system registry or fix them. That is where third party software comes in. CCleaner is freeware that is used to find any links that may be broken in the system registry. Messing with the system registry is tricky and can be quite dangerous if you do not know what you are doing. Software makes the process relatively easy.

System Mechanic from IOLO Technologies is another third party registry tool on the market. It is not free but is very good at resolving registry issues and improving the speed of your computer.

The MSCONFIG tool is commonly used to help improve the performance of your computer. Using this utility you can improve how fast your PC runs. You type “msconfig” and the Run prompt from the Start Menu. In the start up tab you will see displayed a listing of all the programs that start up when you boot your PC. Tweaking this list to have only the most essential and critical software loading will not only improve your boot time it will improve the overall speed of your PC.

When choosing programs to disable from automatically starting up you should keep any anti-virus software running programs to consider disabling include Skype, MSN, media players, etc. But the choice is yours and you are the only person who can determine what is important to you.

Creating shortcuts on your desktop can give you quick access to the programs you disable but be careful to not over clutter your desktop as that can slow down how fast your computer boots up as well.

Be sure not to disable any start up programs that are required by your computer operating system to startup and run.

Windows Defender is a spyware tool that you can get from Microsoft for free. You can use this tool in place of MSCONFIG as well. It is a task and startup manager as well as a tool to protect your system from spyware. If you have a Windows XP or Vista machine be sure to download Windows Defender.

There are some easy things you can do that will improve how fast your computer runs. They do not take a lot of time nor do they require a lot of technical expertise. All computers experience issues with speed at one time or another. There are many causes that result in a slow performing computer and therefore there may be many solutions.

It may be errors in the Registry file that is causing the speed issues with your computer. Registry errors can account for over ninety percent of issues related to speed in computers. As computers age and programs are installed and issues encountered during improper shutdowns the registry can become unstable or corrupt. It is better to try to maintain your registry and prevent these issues from becoming real problems. There are many registry cleaners on the market you can use as Microsoft does not provide a tool in the operating system.

Next to registry issues the second cause of major speed issues can be attributed to malware residing on your system. Malware can be adware, spyware or viruses. Any or all of these are potentially damaging not only to your computers performance but to your systems integrity and the security of your information. Microsoft has several tools online that you can download from their site that will scan and remove any threats found. It is important to run these on a regular basis or to install a software that constantly runs in the background checking for these threats for you.

Unless you have just purchased a new computer you have probably noticed that it has begun to run slower over time. As you fill up the hard drive with videos, music, games, programs and other things that may unfortunately include spyware and viruses you PC can begin to bog down.

If you have a fairly new computer running one of the latest operating systems then you have several powerful tools that will allow you to improve the performance of your computer. The easiest thing to begin with is to clear out the clutter on the hard drive. Microsoft provides the Disk Cleanup utility to automate this process for you. It will find anything that is safe to delete. You have the option to keep anything you want but with Disk Cleanup you do not have to go searching through your folders and files to find duplicate, unnecessary and temporary items.

The Error Checking utility that Microsoft has provided is also a useful tool. This utility fill find and fix any errors that are found on your disk. Bad sectors can be caused by power outages and software or system crashes. These can cause anything from slowness to more serious issue on your PC and you need to take care of them before they get out of hand.

Lastly the Disk Defragmenter utility will improve the performance of your computer by organizing the files and programs into a central location.

All these utilities should be run monthly at a minimum and weekly if you use your computer every day.